ReThreading Madness

About ReThreading Madness

Bernadine Fox brings a rare and powerful combination of lived experience, long-term disability rights advocacy, and creative insight to her role as host and producer of ReThreading Madness, the award-winning radio show and podcast that dares to shift how we think about mental health. A recipient of the 2022 Courage to Come Back Award, Bernadine is a white settler of Scottish, Irish, and French heritage with a familial connection to the Tsuut'ina nation.  She has spent over 30 years advocating for those with lived experience of mental health challenges including survivors of trauma and therapy harm. She is an intersectional feminist, artist, and author of Coming to Voice: Surviving an Abusive Therapist—a memoir that confronts the devastating misuse of power in therapeutic relationships. Bernadine is not a clinician, but she is a deeply informed mental health advocate with firsthand knowledge of trauma, CPTSD, and disability. Her background includes decades of work as a support worker for survivors of severe childhood trauma, a trauma consultant, and public speaker. She has led expressive arts groups in collaboration with Richmond Mental Health and Gallery Gachet, where she also served on the board and helped publish The Ear magazine. She has served on the board of such organizations as Kickstart (Disability Arts and Culture) which focused on breaking down barriers to creative access for people with disabilities. What sets Bernadine apart as a radio host is her unwavering commitment to telling the truth—even when it's uncomfortable. She doesn't shy away from difficult conversations; she invites them. With compassion and clarity, she brings forward voices that are often silenced, challenges harmful narratives, and explores the messy realities of mental health, trauma, and recovery. ReThreading Madness is more than a show. Under Bernadine's guidance, it's a platform for unfiltered, survivor-centered dialogue—one that refuses to pathologize trauma and instead builds community through shared truth.  RTM won the Breaking Barriers CRABO award through the NCRA. Bernadine currently lives in the forest with two cats, raises her grandchild, and continues to create, speak, and advocate for a world where mental health care is ethical, accessible, and just. ReThreading Madness is produced with the support of Vancouver Coop Radio CFRO 100.FM on the ancestral and unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.  We extend our gratitude and appreciation to the Indigenous people who have been living and working on this land from time immemorial. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support (https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss).

Publisher

Bernadine Fox

Category

health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

27 Sept 2022

Latest episode

27 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

144 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 Oct 2026

   Institutional Betrayal: #IAmJaneDoe Movement

   Institutional Betrayal: #IAmJaneDoe Movement Trigger Warning: Discuss about sexual assault. Most of us have had the experience of going to someone in authority, someone who was supposed to help, and instead we were turned away, dismissed, or worse, blamed for what happened to us. Maybe it was a hospital, a school, a church, a police department, or a regulatory body.  As trauma survivors, we are often told to ask for help and report.  And instead of being supported, as is expected, we are too often doubted, ignored, or punished for speaking up. There's a name for this and it does real psychological harm, sometimes more harm than the original wrongdoing itself. Because when the place we turned to for protection becomes the place that hurts us, something fundamental breaks. And of course the most commonly known example of this currently is the Cornell 7 – but make no mistake Jane Doe’s story is not unique.  Tik Tok alone reports that there have been 31,500 posts since this story broke that have included the hashtag #Iamjanedoe and with that 71 million views.  #IAmJaneDoe has become a global movement.  Survivors of all ages, (young to 70 years old) are disclosing experiences of being drugged and assaulted by groups of men that span half a century.  Given that the issue of sexual assault has been talked about and examined for many decades now, the fact that the statistics haven’t changed is a glaring red flag. We have failed to hold perpetrators and our institutions accountable.  Cornell 7 makes that abundantly clear.  What has changed is the weight survivors are made to carry and the cost to their lives of bearing it. In this episode of ReThreading Madness, Bernadine Fox speaks with Erin Nicole McGinnis, licensed psychotherapist in Los Angeles and a survivor herself, about what institutional betrayal is, how institutions cover their tracks, how victims are asked to advocate for themselves at the moment they are least able to, and what it would look like for institutions to actually do the right thing. Erin writes about healing from abuse, coercive control, and betrayal in her Substack, Letters of Unlearning. Music by Shari Ulrich, Karen Holt, Good Vibes Tribe Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support (https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss). www.rethreadingmadness.ca

2. 

   20 Oct 2026

   Never Never Never Give Up with Rose777

   Never Never Never Give Up with Rose777 Rose 777 has rebuilt her life so many times she has lost count. At 17, she was taken from her grandparents’ home in the middle of the night and sent to a Utah wilderness troubled teen program, strip-searched, isolated, and prohibited from casual conversation. She got out in 10 weeks by treating the whole thing like a game. She tried to rebuild. Then at 19 she woke up permanently paralyzed, cause unknown, and rebuilt again learning to drive with hand controls.  She built a career, performed onstage, and volunteered for a decade at the rehab where she had once been a patient. Then she lost it all again. Her independence, which she had treated as proof of survival, had quietly left her isolated and exposed to danger. She experienced homelessness while profoundly disabled, survived a violent marriage, and flew to Louisiana with almost nothing except her wheelchair, her medical supplies, and a plaque that read: Never Never Never Give Up. From there Rose spent nearly a decade producing Crrow777 Radio, creating hundreds of episodes while learning to remain open-minded across ideological difference without surrendering her own judgment. In this episode of ReThreading Madness, Rose sits down with Bernadine Fox to talk about reinventing yourself not once but repeatedly, what you carry when you start over with nothing, and what it means to finally step forward to tell your own story. Music It's Alright by Shari Ulrich Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support (https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss). www.rethreadingmadness.ca

3. 

   19 Oct 2026

   No Compass, No Boundaries: The Writers of Off the Map

   No Compass, No Boundaries: The Writers of Off the Map This week on Rethreading Madness, Bernadine Fox sits down with Seema Shaw, self-taught visual artist, writer, and organizer of Professional Artistic Growth Made Accessible (PAGMA), a free professional development program for Vancouver visual artists and writers with lived experience of mental health issues. Seema co-edited Off the Map: Vancouver Writers with Lived Experience of Mental Health Issues, published this May by Belle Press, alongside Betsy Worland and Kate Bird, and has her own creative nonfiction piece in the collection. Seema talks about how chronic illness redirected her toward visual art, how a daily challenge with tiny tags became a decade-long commitment to collage, and why she built PAGMA, a project that grew from one small discussion group in 2021 into something that now encompasses both visual art and writing mentorship, workshops, and the anthology itself. Also on the show: three contributors to Off the Map read from their work. Sandra Yuen, visual artist, musician, and writer, reads her poem “Turmoil.” Quinn Martens, visual artist and first-time fiction writer, reads from “I Tap,” a science fiction psychological thriller about a street photographer with an anxiety disorder navigating surveillance and digital life. And Merle Ginsberg reads “The Cost,” a poem about living with manic depression for forty years, introduced by one of the most quietly devastating lines in the book: it has no compass, no boundaries, it shakes with power silently. Music by Shari Ulrich Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support (https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss). www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Who has been a guest on ReThreading Madness

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Seema Shah
• Betsy Warland
• Kate Bird
• Quin Martins
• Sandra Yuen

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

3,826

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

4.4 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 60 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

80

Social presence

0

YouTube

68

Engagement

32

Contact ReThreading Madness

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Questions about ReThreading Madness